Browsed byTag: medicine for travel

The day after Machu Picchu, I woke up to an unholy alliance between my sinuses and bowels. I hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in days. My body ached, I couldn’t breathe, and my trips to the bathroom left me demoralized and anxious. Liz reminded me that we had to check out of the hostel at 10:30. That night we had a ten hour bus ride. I cringed at the thought of just sitting up in bed. A stream of questions added a self-inflicted insult to injury: “What am I doing here? Why did I think this trip would be fun? Can I handle over nine more months of this?”

In the months and years leading up to this trip Elizabeth and I would often try to measure our excitement by reminding ourselves that it wasn’t going to be comfortable. We mentally prepared for long bus rides and resigned ourselves to the fact that we’d get sick, probably more than once. Actually being sick is different story, but at least we came prepared.

And this is probably the biggest lesson we knew, but have now internalized. If you’re going to do extended travel outside of the developed world: Bring Medicine. Here is a list of the meds we brought and have already used in our first three weeks.

Azithromycin (diarrhea anti-biotic)

Cipro (diarrhea; I’m allergic to arithromycin)

Loperamide Hydrochloride (anti-diarrheal)

Rehydration salts (rehydrate after diarrhea)

Zantac (acid in the stomach)

Pepto-Bismal (all things stomach)

Claritin-D (allergies and congestion)

Zicam (cold symptom relief and prevention)

Emergen-C (cold prevention)

Purel (obvious cold prevention must)

Advil (aches and pains)

Kleenex (we’ve gone through a ton of these)

I eventually rolled out of bed and re-packed my bag. Liz wasn’t feeling great either. She had sharp pains in her stomach and felt generally weak. We spent the next eight hours camped out on the couch in the lobby waiting for our bus. We watched the hostel move, the dogs come and go. At one point, the man at the front desk tucked me in with a blanket (pictured above). And at least we weren’t spending any money.

By the time we arrived in Arequipa, Elizabeth’s stomach had cleared up. Mine would take a few more days. I worried I might have had some sort of superbug but it turned out Elizabeth had misread the dosage frequency on the Cipro. (For more on the importance of quickly forgiving your spouse for innocent oversights see our previous post). We took things easy for a few days in Arequipa like we planned, and I appreciated the fact that there are worse places to recuperate.

It’s been over a week now since I was writhed in bed doubting the whole idea of this trip. Things have changed. We’re now on a bus heading toward the Chilean border. In 48 hours, we’ll be in San Pedro de Atacama, surrounded by deserts, volcanoes, and the best stargazing in the world. A couple days ago, we hiked to the bottom of the deepest canyon in the world and then back up again. My sinuses haven’t cleared up and I’m on a daily Claritin habit, but life is good. We went to the pharmacy in Arequipa to restock on our meds and again, we feel prepared. There are no more doubts. I feel on top of the world.

Will

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